this is one of several seemingly inocuious (nyt) questions that then gives certain people licence to posit and discuss monsterous sociopathic aberations all cutsey like it's JUST intelectual and these things NEED to be determined, but of course there is NO need, or at least nothing that can be spoken out along with the subject itself. such as a bunch of wackjobs who have SOLD the comodified and productivised undefined concept of consiousness, but they have no actual product and are going for ever wierder and harder excursions into the darkest wastelands of philosophy, science, useing intelectual academic gidderish and are nudging up on the occult. maybe rent a particle accelerator and put the koolaid in that first.